Renu Adhikari Rajbhandari is the Founder of Women’s Rehabilitation Center, a leading women rights organization in Nepal, and the Chairperson of the National Alliance of Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRD) in Nepal, a nationwide network working in different human right issues. A well known activist and organizer, Renu is a graduate of the Moscow Medical Institute. She served as a medical doctor in remote hospitals of Nepal for more than 11 years where she was drawn into the field of women’s rights, particularly against the trafficking of women and children. Renu has been a driving force in establishing national rapporteurs against trafficking office within National Human Rights Commission of Nepal and bringing a national plan of action against trafficking by the government of Nepal. She has served as an adviser to the office of the Prime Minister of Nepal and the first national rapporteur against trafficking in Nepal. Currently she coordinates and leads a national anti-rape campaign focusing on justice for the survivors of sexual violence during more than a decade of violent political struggle in Nepal. Renu was awarded an Asoka Fellowship in 1995.

Wendy Ake is the director of the Just Public Finance program at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. Wendy was previously a researcher with the Global Justice Program at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University and served on the editorial board of Kirwan’s journal Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary in Global Contexts. She has worked with a number of community-based organizations and advocacy campaigns targeting issues associated with forced migration, refugee rights, internally displaced peoples, environmental politics, democratic media, and social movement building. With formal training in economic geography, physics, ecology, and data visualization, Wendy has participated in multiple research areas. She has also worked at the Children’s Learning Research Collaborative at Ohio State University’s College of Education, the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing, the Physics Education Research Group at Ohio State, the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio, and the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights. Wendy earned her master’s degree in Environmental Science & Natural Resources at Ohio State University.

Anjali Appadurai is trained as a Human Ecologist—human ecology is a trans-disciplinary philosophy focusing on the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and constructed environments. Anjali has long been involved in the world of social and environmental advocacy. Her work has specialized in the intersection of international environmental governance and social movements. Anjali has worked as an activist, campaigner, and strategic communicator at a local and international level around issues of climate change and environmental governance. Anjali is interested in how to connect progressive legal reform with the values that are precious to human communities. Anjali believes environmental justice is inherently tied to social and economic justice. Anjali works as Communications & Engagement Specialist at West Coast Environmental Law to build the organization’s voice and to galvanize support for strong environmental laws in British Columbia.

Darren Arquero is Research Assistant to john a. powell where his work focuses on structural racialization, the mind sciences, Othering and Belonging, and the circle of human concern. He is currently a PhD candidate in Ethnic Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was the 2013 recipient of the Philip Brett LGBT Studies Fellowship. Darren’s research interests include trans-national feminist and queer theories/theologies, cultural politics of gender and sexuality, and Filipino American/diaspora studies. His academic work is informed by his activist background in queer religious organizing—coming from his participation with the 2010 Soulfource Equality Ride. Prior to joining the Haas Institute, Darren interned as a Network and Research Associate at Race Forward, working as the primary author for the report Better Together in the South: Building Movements across Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Darren is also an Associate Curator at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco.

Alana Banks is a junior at UC Berkeley concentrating on American Studies with a concentration in Public Health, City Planning, and Public Policy. Alana is also a Student Teacher Poet in Poetry for the People, and an organizer in #BlackLivesMatter on campus with the Black Student Union. Alana still lives in North Oakland where she grew up. She is a former member of UC Berkeley’s Women’s rugby team and is currently studying health disparities in low-income communities as her thesis.

Hatem Bazian is a co-founder and Professor of Islamic Law and Theology at Zaytuna College, the first Accredited Muslim Liberal Arts College in the U.S. In addition, Prof.Bazian is a lecturer in the departments of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Prof. Bazian has also served as an adjunct professor of law at Boalt School of Law at UC Berkekley. He teaches many courses on Islamic law, society, Islamophobia and the “Othering” of Islam. Prof. Bazian has also served as a visiting Professor in Religious Studies at Saint Mary’s College and adviser to the Religion, Politics and Globalization Center at UC Berkeley. Prof. Bazian founded the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the Center for Race and Gender at UC Berkeley dedicated to the systematic study of Othering Islam and Muslims. Prof. Bazian also launched the Islamophobia Studies Journal, a collaborative project published bi-annually. In addition to academic work, Dr, Bazian is a weekly columnist for the Turkish Daily Sabah Newspaper and Turkey Agenda online magazine. Dr. Bazian is founder and national Chair of American Muslims for Palestine, board member of the Islamic Scholarship Fund, Muslim Legal Fund of America, President of Dollar for Deen Charity, and Chair of the Northern California Islamic Council.

Jovanka Beckles is a progressive member of the Richmond City Council where she works to empower the under-served. She has successfully championed movements to offer the Municipal ID/Debit Card program to undocumented and others who need IDs, as well as the Ban the Box policy to facilitate previously incarcerated citizens getting jobs. She has been a leader for gay and lesbian rights. In her job as a children’s mental health worker in Contra Costa County, Jovanka works with distressed children and families to create a more nurturing environment in which children can thrive.

Gary A. Bolles is a serial entrepreneur and longtime Silicon Valley observer. He is the co-founder and CEO of Xigi Inc., a San Francisco-based company developing communities of impact using software and events, for customers such as Nokia and the Skoll Foundation. He has been the producer, co-producer, or host of numerous conferences and roundtables throughout the U.S., and is a co-founder of the Social Capital Markets conference, which brings together over 1000 entrepreneurs and investors every year. For the past six years, he has served as a consulting producer for Google’s annual partner conference, Zeitgeist, and for Nokia’s IdeasCamp for the past two years. Bolles was previously COO of Evolve Software; VP Marketing for Network Products; and Editorial Director of Interactive Week, Network Computing and Yahoo! Internet Life magazines. He currently spearheads Kanect, an initiative to integrate a global information-sharing platform about entrepreneurial efforts to impact local and global problems.

Derrick Cliftonis a staff writer at Mic, a digital news site—reaching more than 20 million monthly readers—that challenges traditional narratives while chronicling serious topics important to young people. Within Mic’s Identities section, Clifton reports and analyzes issues at various intersections of identity, popular culture and social politics. During undergraduate study as a Point Foundation Scholar, Clifton earned a BSc from Northwestern University and was named by Northwestern magazine as a 2012 Senior to Watch. Clifton went on to receive training in the master’s program at the Medill School of Journalism. A contributing opinion writer at The Daily Dot, Clifton’s other works and commentary have appeared in a variety of outlets, including reflections on life as a black, urban-raised, queer and gender-fluid person.

Cindy Cooley is the Global Program Manager for Cisco’s Men for Inclusion program, where she is responsible for developing the male ally framework and expanding the footprint globally. Through this role she collaborates with Cisco senior executives across the company, as well as the Inclusion & Collaboration team to increase the representation of diverse talent within the company. She has been a leader and member of the Cisco Foundation’s Silicon Valley Impact Grants evaluation team for five years and also involved in several STEM initiatives within Cisco to help develop the next generation of tech talent. She is passionate about helping foster growth and advancement of girls and women in STEM. She is also a professional mentor to Emerging Leaders from the Middle East & Africa through the TechWomen program, an initiative of the U.S. Department of State. Prior to working at Cisco, Cindy held roles at Oracle. Cindy received a B.S. in Business Administration from California State University, East Bay and attended graduate school at the University of Colorado, Boulder studying Public Policy & Political Science.

Elsadig Elsheikh is the director of the Global Justice Program at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, where he oversees research on the global food system, global equity, and the human rights agenda. Previously, Elsadig directed the Global Justice Program at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University, where he also served as an associate editor of the Institute’s journal Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary in Global Contexts. Elsadig has also worked as a researcher with the European Economic Community, Amnesty International, Witness for Peace, and various international grassroots and advocacy organizations on issues related to internal displaced persons, indigenous peoples, human rights, immigration, social mobilization, and environmental and social justice in Sudan, Greece, Colombia, and the United States. Elsadig holds bachelor degrees from Panteion University Athens, Greece and the Ohio State University, and dual masters degree from the SIT Graduate Institute.

Alicia Garzais an organizer, writer, and freedom dreamer living and working in Oakland, CA. She is the Special Projects Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance—the nation’s leading voice for dignity and fairness for the millions of domestic workers in the United States, most of whom are women. She is also the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter, a national organizing project focused on combatting anti-Black state sanctioned violence. Alicia's work challenges us to celebrate the contributions of Black queer women's work within popular narratives of Black movements, and reminds us that the Black radical tradition is long, complex and international. Her activism reflects organizational strategies and visions that connect emerging social movements without diminishing the specificity of the structural violence facing Black lives.

Glenn Harrishas been working on issues of race and social justice for over twenty years to build a more just and democratic society. For the last six years, Glenn has worked as the Manager of the City of Seattle Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI). The mission of the RSJI is to end institutionalized racism in city government and promote multiculturalism and full participation by all residents. Glenn has supported the start of similar initiatives in jurisdictions across the country and helped found the regional Governing for Racial Equity Network. Glenn's work in the City of Seattle also includes the establishment of the Seattle Office of Community Police Commission and four years as the Southeast District Coordinator for the Department of Neighborhoods. He came to city government after five years with Western States Center, an intermediary that provides technical assistance and training to organizations working to achieve social change in an eight-state region. Glenn was also the interim director at the MRG Foundation in Portland, Oregon and is currently a board member of the Seattle Foundations Neighbor-to-Neighbor Fund and the Willamette Valley Law Project, which is an Oregon-based non-profit supporting farm worker rights.

Eric Holt-Giménezhas been Executive Director of Food First since 2006. He is the editor of the Food First bookFood Movements Unite! Strategies to Transform Our Food Systems; co-author ofFood Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justicewith Raj Patel and Annie Shattuck; and author of the bookCampesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture, and of many academic, magazine and news articles. Of Basque and Puerto Rican heritage, Eric grew up milking cows and pitching hay in Point Reyes, CA, where he learned that putting food on the table is hard work. After studying rural education and biology at the University of Oregon and Evergreen State College, he traveled through Mexico and Central America, where he was drawn to the simple life of small-scale farmers.

Jakada Imani is the director of the Center for Spiritual and Social Transformation at the Pacific School of Religion, which trains, supports, and inspires spiritually-rooted changemakers who are working to create a world where everyone can flourish. Prior to joining PSR, Jakada served for six years as Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. After taking over from the center’s founder Van Jones, Jakada led the Center to pass federal legislation (the Green Jobs Act), lead the organization in four successful state-wide ballot measure campaigns (No on Prop 6 in 2008, No on Prop 23 in 2010, and Yes on Props 30 and 39 in 2012), and launched the Center's newest effort, a goal to reduce the US incarceration rate by 50% in ten years. Before becoming Executive Director, Jakada was a lead strategist and chief team member on some of Ella Baker Center’s most high profile campaigns. He also serves on the Board of Compton Foundation and the OneLife Institute and is a member of Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. Born and raised in Oakland, California, Jakada is the father to four powerful and creative young girls.

Cynthia Kaufman is the Director of the Institute of Community and Civic Engagement at De Anza College where she also teaches Philosophy. She is the author of two books on social change Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope (Lexington Books, 2012) and Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change (South End Press, 2003). She is a lifelong social change activist, having worked on issues such as tenants’ rights, police abuse, union organizing, international politics, and most recently climate change. She received her PhD and MA in Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and her BA in Development Studies from University of California, Berkeley.

Nunu Kidane was, until recently, the Director of Priority Africa Network, a progressive advocacy organization based in Oakland. For nearly three decades, Nunu has worked on global development policy analysis as it relates to Africa. She’s written on militarism, resource extraction, migration, social, economic and racial justice. In January 2012, she was recognized by the White House as a “Champion of Change” for her work with the African diaspora. She is founding member of the Black Immigration Network and a board member of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). Nunu has been the voice for enhanced trans-national dialogue on mobility, globalization and race, and facilitating immigrant community conversations on culture and identity. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and she resides in the city of Berkeley with her husband and children.

Zoë Levittis a Local Policy Associate for the Alameda County Public Health Department’s Place Matters initiative. She coordinates community-based research partnerships to advance local policy change related to the root causes of health inequity—with a focus on housing, land use, and transportation. Before leading ACPHD’s contributions to Causa Justa :: Just Cause’s report Development without Displacement, she coordinated a participatory Health Impact Assessment of regional bus funding, which used primary data collected by and from bus riders to analyze the public health impacts of service cuts and fare increases on transit-dependent communities. Prior to working at ACPHD, Zoe conducted research and policy analysis for non-profit organizations working to advance social and environmental justice and equitable community development in New York and the SF Bay Area. Zoe has a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in Urban Studies and a passion for public service and community-driven change.

Setha Low is Professor of Anthropology, Environmental Psychology, Geography and Women’s Studies, and Director of the Public Space Research Group at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Recent books include: Politics of Public Space ; Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space, and Culture and Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. Her current research is on private housing regimes and governance in New York City. She is completing the forthcoming "Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place" that will be published by Routledge in 2016. Dr. Low lectures internationally on public space, social justice and diversity.

Stephen Menendian is the Assistant Director and Director of Research at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society where he oversees the Institute’s research initiatives and projects, including the development of the Inclusiveness Index, opportunity enrollment methodology for university admissions, network building efforts, and community engagement. Stephen co-authored three Supreme Court amicus briefs submitted by the Haas Institute. Stephen has trained policymakers, businesses, and other institutions on diversity, inclusion, and affirmative action practices, policies, and compliance. Previously Stephen was the senior legal associate at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University. Stephen authored the Ohio’s “Diversity Strategies For Successful Schools Guidance” which was adopted by the State Board of Education of Ohio. Stephen has guest lectured at UC Berkeley School of Law, the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State, and co-taught a seminar at Wayne State University Law School. Stephen is a licensed attorney.

Rachel Morello-Froschis a professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on environmental health and environmental justice. She is particularly interested in addressing the double jeopardy faced by communities of color and the poor who experience high exposures to environmental hazards and who are more vulnerable to the toxic effects of pollution due to poverty, malnutrition, discrimination, and underlying health conditions. How do matters of race and class affect distributions of health risks in the United States? What are the causes and consequences of environmental disparities and health inequalities? How can research create "upstream" opportunities for intervention and prevention? She is also interested in evaluating the influence of community participation on environmental health research, science, regulation, and policy-making, as well as in developing methods to foster community-based participatory research.

Priscila Muñoz Sandoval is fourth year transfer student at UC Berkeley and will be graduating this May with a degree in Molecular and Cell Biology. She is currently a core leader of R.I.S.E. (Rising Immigrant Scholars through Education), a student organization on campus whose mission is to support, empower, and advocate for undocumented students. She is also an undergraduate representative of the Instructional Opportunities Committee whose purpose is to support developing opportunities for non-DACA qualified undocumented students, including equalizing academic and professional experiences with documented graduate students.

Karen Nakamura is a cultural and visual anthropologist at Yale University, and her research focuses on disability, sexuality, and other minority social movements. In 2006, she publishedDeaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity, which is an ethnography of sign language and deaf social movements in contemporary Japan. Her second project on psychiatric disabilities and community-based recovery in contemporary Japan resulted in two ethnographic films and a book A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan which was published by Cornell University in 2014. Currently, Nakamura is researching the intersections of sexuality, disability, and eugenics.

Na'ilah Suad Nasir's research centers on how issues of culture and race influence the learning, achievement, and educational trajectories of African American and other non-dominant students in urban school and community settings. She is interested in the intertwining of social and cultural contexts (cultural practices, institutions, communities, and societies) and the learning and educational trajectories of individuals, especially in connection with inequity in educational outcomes. Specific studies have focused on the nature of mathematical thinking and learning for African American students in practices outside of school, such as basketball and dominoes; relations between racial/ethnic identity and mathematics learning and achievement in a diverse urban high school; the nature of connection and disconnection for African American high school students (and the role the institutional structures of the school played in these processes); racial/ethnic identities and stereotypes of African American students. She is also interested in marginalized students' experiences of teaching and learning in juvenile hall schools.

Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco. She grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border and got involved in immigrant rights movement at age 16 in the fight against Proposition 187 in California and is the former co-director of the Oakland-based organization School of Unity and Liberation. Her research and activism focuses on undocumented youth, the political economy of (higher) education, and social change. Genevieve has published work on undocumented students, the neo-liberalization of higher education, political activism among undocumented migrant students, and constructions of "citizenship" and "illegality". Her current research focuses on undocumented Latino community college students in California's Central Valley. Her most recent work appears in Latino Studies, The Journal of Latinos and Education, Aztlán, and Harvard Educational Review(forthcoming). She has also produced a video in the #GlobalPOV series out of UC Berkeley about the politics of hope, titled "Will Hope End Inequality?".

Julie Nelsonis the Director of the Government Alliance for Race and Equity and a Senior Fellow at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley. The Alliance is a national network of governmentworking to achieve racial equity and advance opportunities for all.Nelson is the former Director of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights where she provided both vision and hands-on work on Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative. She served as the Director for the eight years. She has over 25 years of experience working for local, regional and federal government, including with the City of Seattle’s Human Services Department; Administrative Services and the utilities; Housing and Urban Development; and Pima County Community Services in Tucson, Arizona. She has a Masters Degree in Economics from the University of Washington, and has served on the boards of many non-profits and is actively involved with community groups working for race and social justice. Nelson is driven by her passion for achieving equity and social justice.

Rajkumari Neogy, MA is a consultant, facilitator, and entrepreneur who works with individuals and organizations to make transformative and sustainable shifts in the areas of diversity and inclusion. For the past 20 years, she has worked with Fortune 500 companies, such as Cisco Systems, Facebook, Sony, Adobe, JVC and Amazon. In 2013 she founded iRestart, a company that provides consulting in the areas of leadership, organizational development, diversity and inclusion and coaching to individuals, large organizations and start-ups. As a Certified Master Trainer and Neuro-Linguistic Programmer holding a Master’s Degree in Transformative Leadership Development from the California Institute of Integral Studies, Rajkumari sits quite comfortably at the intersection of neuroscience, technology and culture.

Dorsey Nunnis executive director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), an organization engaging in advocacy and organizing with communities impacted by the criminal justice system.The first formerly incarcerated person to direct LSPC, he is also co-founder of All of Us or None, originators of the term “Ban the Box.” Mr. Nunn has won numerous awards, and was a member of a national delegation of formerly incarcerated people asking White House staff for an executive order to Ban the Box.

Mike Parker is co-coordinator of the Richmond Progressive Alliance in Richmond, California. The RPA is the community organization that has battled corporate domination of politics and the pitting of different sections of Richmond, California against each other. The RPA has organized and supported efforts led by others for Ban the Box, reentry support programs, ending drivers license checkpoints, municipal IDs, minimum wage, stopping foreclosures, making corporations pay their fair share, and environmental justice. In November 2014, the RPA supported candidates for City Council—accepting no corporate contributions helped defeat a slate of candidates backed by Chevron’s $4.3 million—using effective grass roots organizing. Parker teaches industrial electronics at a community college. He has a long history of working with unions and union activists, and is the co-author of the Labor Notes book Democracy is Power.

Gihan Pererais a nationally recognized progressive strategist, communityorganizer and leader in the US social justice movement. He is currently theExecutive Director of the Florida New Majority, a statewide civil rights andcivic engagement organization that is working to connect and empowerFlorida’s diverse communities. Perera is co-founder and former ExecutiveDirector of the Miami Workers Center, a community organizing institution forlow-income Black and Latino communities in South Florida. His leadership of the center helped turn it into a national peer anchor to a number ofstrategic initiatives including the US Social Forum, the Right to the City Alliance,and a number of other efforts to build the theory, practice and capacity of workhappening at the intersection of race, gender, the economy, and theenvironment. Perera began his activism as a high school student in Los Angeles and then at UC Berkeley. Whileorganizing against the first Gulf War, Perera hosted a radio program melding hispassion for social and racial justice and music. Gihan worked as a unionorganizer for seven years withAmalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). He was also a trainer for the AFL-CIO's Organizing Institute.

Dawn Phillipshas been an organizer engaged in a range of social, economic and environmental justice organizations for over 20 years. He is currently the Co-Director of Programs at Causa Justa :: Just Cause, a Bay Area membership organization focused on community development, housing and immigrant justice issues, building grassroots power and community leadership through rights-based services, policy campaigns, civic engagement, direct action, and movement building.Dawn leads the local, regional and national policy campaign work for the organization and was lead author on CJJC’s report Development Without Displacement: Resisting Gentrification in the Bay Area, a study on the impacts of gentrification and displacement on working class communities of color. Dawn serves as Chair of the Steering Committee of the Right to the City Alliance, a formation of almost 40 community organizations based in 13 cities around the country, of which Causa Justa :: Just Cause is a founding member.

Russell Robinsonis a professor at Berkeley Law. During the 2014-15 school year, Robinson was the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and a fellow at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Robinson was a professor of law at UCLA. Robinson graduated with honors from Harvard Law School after receiving his B.A. summa cum laude from Hampton University. He clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court. Robinson has also worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, and the firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld in Los Angeles, practicing entertainment law. Robinson's scholarly and teaching interests include anti-discrimination law, race and sexuality, law and psychology, constitutional law, and media and entertainment law. His publications include: Unequal Protection; “Diverging Identities” in After Marriage: The Future of LGBT Rights;“The Uncomfortable Relationship between Sexual Liberty and Sexual Oppression” in Rewriting Homosexuality, and many others.

Susan Schweik is a professor of English, Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities, and co-leader of the Disability Studies Faculty Cluster of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. A faculty member of at University of California, Berkeley since 1984, she has been involved with the development of disability studies at UC Berkeley for over 15 years. Schweik is co-director of the Disability Studies minor as well, and for five years she co-coordinated the Ed Roberts Fellowships in Disability Studies post-doctoral program at UC Berkeley. She is the recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence, the Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education, the Distinguished Teaching Award, and a 2013 Leon Henkin Citation for “exceptional commitment to the educational development of students from groups who are underrepresented in academy.”She has published two books, A Gulf So Deeply Cut: American Women Poets and the Second World War (1990) and The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (2007), and is working on a third, which is a cultural history that concerns intelligence testing, disability, race and gender, child welfare interventions, eugenics, and incarcerations of various sorts in Iowa during the Great Depression. Its tentative title is Lost and Found: How a Ward of Women in a “Feeble Minded Home” Taught Us to Teach to the Test.

In 2010, Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Simon was named to the Adrian A Kragen Professor of Law, a chair named in memory of one of Boalt Hall's great 20th century scholar/teachers who died in 2005. Before joining the Boalt Hall faculty in 2003, Simon was a professor at the University of Miami School of Law. Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan from 1990 to 1992. He clerked for the Honorable Judge William C. Canby Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1988-89). In Spring 2011, Simon was appointed the Leverhulme Visiting Professor of Law, University of Edinburgh, School of Law. Simon teaches courses on criminal law, criminal justice, law and culture, risk and the law, and socio-legal studies. His scholarship concerns the role of criminal justice and punishment in modern societies, insurance and other contemporary practices of governing risk, the cultural lives of law, and the intellectual history of law and the social sciences. Simon is a faculty associate of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice.

Shelly Tochluk is the author of Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk about Race and How to Do It. An educator, with a background in psychology, Shelly spent 10 years as a researcher, counselor, and teacher in California’s public schools. She received her PhD in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2005 where she investigated how white racial identity impacts friendship relationships. For the last eight years she has prepared teachers to work with Los Angeles’ diverse school population as the Chair of the Education Department at Mount Saint Mary’s University. Shelly also serves on the leadership team of AWARE-LA (Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere-Los Angeles), a community of anti-racists that has hosted ongoing dialogues for over 12 years. Shelly’s second book, Living in the Tension: The Quest for a Spiritualized Racial Justice, will be available in Spring 2016. The book explores the tensions that exist between spiritual and racial justice principles and rests on the suggestion that the ability to create widespread, sustainable multi-racial coalitions that can support social, environmental, economic, and political change efforts is enhanced when racial justice issues are explicitly connected to spiritual understandings.

Kim Tranis a graduate student and teacher in the department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Her academic and activist commitments are to laborers, refugee, and queer communities. She writes on race, gender, and economics. Her work has been published locally and nationally in the East Bay Express, Nation of Change, and the Feminist Wire. In 2008, she helped establish the LGBTQ Youthspace, a safe-space and therapeutic program for queer youth of color in San Jose, California. Currently, she is a collective member of Third Woman Press, a national Feminist of Color press that has published titles includingThis Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. She is originally from San Jose, CA, and is a proud survivor of California’s public schools and universities who aspires to think alongside young people in classrooms and community.

Wallace Turbeville a Senior Fellow at DEMOS, practiced law for seven years before joining Goldman Sachs as an investment banker where he specialized in infrastructure finance and public/private partnerships. He also worked in the London office where he was co-head of a group tasked to pursue financing of transportation, energy and environmental projects, particularly in the newly opened eastern European nations. Mr. Turbeville founded and became Managing Partner of the Kensington Group. In late 2000, the firm was engaged to advise public and private clients relating to the California energy crisis. In 2002, the Kensington Group became VMAC, LLC, and Mr. Turbeville became its Chief Executive Officer. He has also worked at Better Markets, was a Visiting Scholar at the Roosevelt Institute, and authored nearly 30 articles concerning financial reform, energy, the environment and political opinion. He has testified on financial reform issues before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Financial Services Committee.

Billy Vaughn, PhD is Senior Managing Partner at DiversityTraining University International, LLC (DTUI.com). He is internationally recognized as a cultural cognitive psychologist with expertise in organizational change, employee engagement, training and instructional design, and harnessing cultural diversity in service of engagement and productivity. Dr. Vaughn founded Diversity Training University International in 1998, which provides human resource management solutions for training, employee engagement, organizational change, compliance, and diversity and inclusion. His doctoral degree is in cultural cognitive psychology. For his dissertation project, he created five pieces of integrated software games to improve fourth grade reading comprehension. He is also a Certified Diversity Professional (CDP). As editor of Diversity Officer Magazine, Billy has contributed to the dissemination of ground breaking diversity leadership articles. Dr.Vaughn is currently on the board of directors for the Asian Pacific Americans in Public Affairs (San Francisco Chapter), an organization that promotes increased political participation in the Asian American community. He offers a lecture on multicultural political coalition building for interns the organization places in political offices. He is also active in fundraising for the organization.

Maurice Weeks is the Campaign Coordinator for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). For the last year and a half Maurice has organized community-led campaigns in the areas of education, predatory debt, and housing justice that expose the lack of accountability of wealthy businesses and individuals, and demand that they pay their fair share to Re-Fund California. In 2012 Maurice worked with student activists to rally behind the Millionaires' Tax (later Proposition 30). More recently Maurice has helped shape a campaign to stimulate local economies by demanding big banks write down principal on mortgages and that they renegotiate predatory debt with California municipalities. In 2009 Maurice earned a bachelors degree in Sociology and Peace and Conflict Studies from Swarthmore College. Originally from Newark, NJ, he currently lives in Oakland, California.